The Bump Stock Ban is based on a hoax

If you remember, the bump stock ban going into effect was premised on the Las Vegas mass shooting at a country music event. If you believe the official story, a single man holed himself up in a hotel room with literally dozens of guns, several phones, and at least one laptop with a missing hard drive, before using his elevated vantage point and some of his firearms to shoot into a crowd. By the time police worked up the courage to enter his room, he was dead -- supposedly by suicide.

The firearms he supposedly used to shoot into the crowd were also supposedly fitted with bump stock devices. The ATF subsequently used that event as justification to make a rule change banning bump stocks by considering them to be machine guns -- a rule change that violates the plain language of the law.

To be sure, there are other possible reasons the FBI might not allow the ATF to examine the guns. A few that come to mind: did the shooter have ties to law enforcement or intelligence agencies that might have shown up if the guns were examined and (especially) their serial numbers traced?

Some people will call this a conspiracy theory. They said the same thing about the idea that the FBI were listening in on the Trump campaign, and look how that turned out. I'm not claiming to know what happened or saying it was all some sort of plot. But is it too much to ask that government agencies tell the truth, stop hiding information, and stop taking advantage of public crises like this one to advance their so-called national security policies through fear?

Two shooters?

I haven't been following the Las Vegas shooting details closely, but the official story isn't adding up. This video suggests there were two shooters, one of which had an M240 machine gun (based on the rate of fire, 600RPM) firing a string of 94 shots in a single string of fire. AR-15s fire about 800RPM and sound very clearly different.

Yes, the sound on the various videos could be edited. It's not conclusive. But it is -- if the evidence wasn't tampered with -- strong support for the multiple-shooters idea, and counter-evidence for the use of AR-15s with bump fire stocks (exclusively, anyway).

I honestly don't have a good idea why someone would want to cover up the multiple-shooters angle. Well, I could speculate and come up with several possibilities; the problem is that I don't have evidence for any of them. What I do have is evidence that the official story doesn't explain, and in many cases, actually contradicts the official story. And, increasingly, thanks to SpyGate, I have evidence that the government and the FBI are not worthy of blind trust.

Was Vegas shooter ranting about Waco, Ruby Ridge, FEMA camps?

The claims are noteworthy but so is the sourcing. The accounts come from a 1,200-page batch of reports released by Vegas PD that includes witness statements and police testimony. The man who says he heard the shooter babbling about FEMA camps mentioned it during a jailhouse interview, raising an obvious question as to whether he was telling the truth or just handing cops something which he thought might lead them to go easy on him.

The bit about Waco and Ruby Ridge comes from a woman who overheard a man whom she thinks was the shooter ranting to another man at a Vegas restaurant three days before the massacre.

Sourcing is thin, and wouldn't the government just love to have a mass shooting they could blame on people opposed to gun control? The targeting doesn't make any sense, either.

I don't buy this one, whether it was mistaken identification or a jailhouse source making things up.

Worst-case scenario: the man doing the ranting about Waco was an FBI agent or informant, per .. well... per Ruby Ridge and the Draw Mohammad attack and the Oaklahoma City bombing. Under that hypothesis, the FBI (or some other government agency) had been tipped off to the alleged shooter, had an informant or agent there with him, and ranted at him in public. That seems a horribly unlikely scenario if they knew he was planning a mass murder in three days, but if they just got a tip and are trying to interrogate him under cover with an informant, it becomes more plausible. And, of course, admitting they were that close but did not act becomes an embarrassment after the fact, something worth covering up.

Three women in Vegas shooter's room?

Recent documents released regarding the the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas Shooting are beginning to shed light on more discrepancies and abnormalities surrounding the official timeline and narrative of the tragedy as originally stated by Sheriff Joe Lombardo and Special Agent Aaron Rouse of the Las Vegas FBI , including documentation that three women were found in the alleged shooter's room.

If true -- and I checked the posted source to verify it -- why haven't we heard about these "3 females" in Paddock's room before? We've heard about one female, a supposed girlfriend, who was also supposedly not there for the shooting. Now there are three, and their names are redacted?

Silicon Greybeard has more on the Vegas POI

His take is about the same as my take: some guy reloading ammunition as a hobby and occasionally selling the results of his work. Consensus seems to be so far that the armor piercing element of the charge is somewhere between complete bullshit and a technicality, and we're not going to know which without knowing the details of the ammunition that was found. I don't have any idea what the law on manufacturing and selling tracer rounds is.

In a Democrat administration we'd get some BS gun control laws passed over this. I bet the ATF is salivating over the possibility of eliminating or regulating reloading if the House turns over to Democrat hands, figuring they can pick up enough Republican squishes in the Senate and pressure Trump to sign it.

Folks, we're going to have to keep an eye on this. It's not going away.

Second person of interest in Vegas shooting identified

The records also included another person of interest, Douglas Haig, whose name the judge ordered redacted. The Las Vegas Review-Journal used an unredacted copy and identified Mr. Haig.

Mr. Haigs whereabouts was unknown and he could not be reached for comment.

A Douglas Haig in Mesa, Ariz., who is an engineer at Honeywell Aerospace, also operated a company called Specialized Military Ammunition, a limited liability corporation his wife opened in 2012. In October, Mr. Haig told Newsweek that he had been interviewed by agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said that he did know Mr. Paddock and had not sold ammunition for a long time. On Tuesday, a website for the company noted We Will Be Closed Indefinitely. Check back to see if/when we are up and running again.

I saw this at Captain's Journal last night, but didn't post it because I couldn't identify a reliable source. Now that the New York Times is publishing the name, I'll link to the Captain's Journal's claim (which they sourced from reddit, and which claims to source from LinkedIn) that the second person of interest had a DOD top secret clearance specializing in military ammunition.

I'm just following the breadcrumbs here, but if true, this is conspiracy-theory level stuff.

UPDATE: Worth noting that, according to the New York Times story, it's not known whether this person is being investigated. Supposedly at least one "person of interest" is still being investigated, but it might not be this person of interest. The other named person of interest is Paddock's girlfriend, who is supposedly not going to be charged.

UPDATE: An arrest warrant was issued for this POI on charges of selling "armor piercing and/or incendiary" ammunition to the shooter.